


Grey Area

by trufflemores



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Anxiety, Depression, F/M, Gen, Heavy Themes, Hurt/Comfort, Nongraphic sexual content, Panic, Prison, Psychological Torture, Recovery, Same rules as Dismantle and Reassemble, Solitary Confinement, Strip Searches, Swearing, Whump, etc - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 15:06:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13250778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores/pseuds/trufflemores
Summary: Companion piece to "Dismantle" and "Reassemble" that can be read as a standalone fic.Legally, it's not torture.  But the human psyche disagrees when it comes to the effects of Solitary Confinement. Barry lands himself eight hours in The Hole.





	Grey Area

**Author's Note:**

> Howdy, folks! 2018 is off to a whumpy start. This piece takes place between my other prison fics, "Dismantle" and "Reassemble," and contains the same set of warnings. I would also like to highlight that this piece may be darker than Dismantle, given that it deals specifically with the psychological torture of solitary confinement. Please heed the warnings.
> 
> One thing I neglected to mention in the fic itself is the exact reason Barry is in "The Hole," which can be found in "Dismantle." Essentially, he attacked another inmate in an accidental outburst.
> 
> If you can find enjoyment, then I hope you enjoy this piece.

At Iron Heights Penitentiary, the solitary confinement cell is twenty-four-square-feet.

Four feet wide and six feet deep. Neither long enough nor wide enough for Barry, six-two, to lie flat on the ground. If he extends his arms to either side of him, he must keep his elbows at a ninety-degree angle on the short side and palms up on the long side. His overhead airspace is approximately three feet. Claustrophobia sets in the second the guard shuts the door behind him.

The smallest legal solitary confinement cells are nauseatingly narrow, fourteen-and-a-half-square-feet, the same approximate dimensions as a portable bathroom unit. He should be grateful for the extra square footage. He should, but when he needs more than thirty-six-square-feet to lie down in either direction, sixty-seven percent of his needs doesn't cut it.

The cell is like an undersized coffin. He closes his eyes, trying to escape it, but the cold and the darkness follow him. In the perfect darkness, the cell seems to shrink around him, pressing in on him, squeezing the air from his lungs. He can't take it. He opens his eyes.

There's a grate near the top of the door, but it's blacked out to prevent even the casual stimuli of guards walking down the hallway from intruding on his solitude. There's a flickering light on the dimmest setting in the corner. If he jumped, he could reach it and burn his hand on it but not much else. The thought of his sole light going out while he's still trapped in this box makes his heart pound.

Sinking into a crouch, he waits a beat before settling fully onto the floor, cross-legged and silent. The cell floor is gritty, unclean, a tacky layer of sweat discernible on the surface. Folding his knees up to his chest, he rests his chin on top of them, arms tucked around his legs. Mouth dry, stomach growling, he thinks about the next eight hours and feels a cold sweat sink into his back.

In middle school, Tony Woodward once shoved him into an open locker and successfully wrenched it shut with him still inside it. He'd panicked, trying and failing to yell for help, his voice too thin to make a sound. Thankfully, his weakly pounding fists drew the attention he needed to escape. It still took almost an hour to get someone's notice. He could have ratted on Tony, _should_ have ratted on Tony, but he kept his silence instead, raw fear and fury paralyzing him.  When the principal asked if he knew who had attacked him, he shook his head.

He knew the truth, but he couldn't prove it. His word didn't carry enough weight on its own.

The familiarity of his circumstances makes a strangled laugh escape him. His word still can't save him. Nothing but hard evidence can save him, hard evidence that he does not have, hard evidence that he cannot acquire. DeVoe staged the scene with exquisite care, ensuring a quick and easy conviction. It must have been refreshing for the jury: as far as moral dilemmas were concerned, this one was a clean-cut resolution.

He, Bartholomew Henry Allen, had murdered Clifford James DeVoe in cold blood. Neighbors had overhead the scuffle and called the police. Police had arrived within minutes to find a body on the floor and a knife with Barry's fingerprints near it.

From an outsider's perspective, it seemed as though DeVoe and he had fought for several moments before Barry seized the knife and subsequently stabbed DeVoe. DeVoe, retreating, had left a trail of blood around the couch before dropping dead to the floor. Barry had let go of the knife, perhaps hoping to divorce himself from its ownership before authorities arrived. Nevertheless, he had not fled when the police kicked in the door, surrendering himself willingly to their custody.

He was booked, jailed, pre-tried, pre-tried, and pre-tried again before the big show. The trial itself lasted four hours; the jury convicted him in less than one. The only stumbling block had been opportunity: the means was spelled out, the motive in the folder clearly demonstrating his restraining order and prior run-ins with DeVoe, but the opportunity stuck to the roofs of their mouths – DeVoe's presence in Barry and Iris' apartment could not be readily explained.

And then came the witnesses, who sincerely, unmaliciously drove the nails into Barry's coffin by explaining what they had overheard, how DeVoe seemed in fear for his life when he visited Barry. DeVoe seemed to have been of the persuasion that Barry could be reasoned with – they'd heard "Barry" let DeVoe inside, "Barry" lock the door – and had been taken by surprise when Barry stabbed him.

Thankfully for the DeVoes' ulterior plan, no one had thought to attempt a break-in to confirm that it was Barry antagonizing DeVoe. Stomping down a door would have been a formidable task. According to the multiple witnesses – neighbors, acquaintances, almost-friends – DeVoe's death-throe struggles only lasted a few minutes before he collapsed. There was nothing any of them could have done.

After all, DeVoe was dead before he even reached the threshold of Barry and Iris' apartment.

Stomach sour, lips turned down, Barry presses his mouth to his prison-uniformed knees and thinks about that scene from a different angle. He imagines Marlize and Dominic working together to drag DeVoe's body to the scene. He doesn't know how they would get the body to the room unnoticed – it must have been quietly, very, very quietly – but he can hear the phone recording of DeVoe's voice being projected. Several of the witnesses – _witness_ being a loose term, given that none of the neighbors saw anything – recorded the conversation.

Dominic – _DeVoe_ – had an eerily good handle on Barry's voice, providing the second half of the conversation. It didn't need to be perfect – a guttural growl, enraged and bloodthirsty, sufficed – but it was compelling. The hairs on the back of Barry's neck had risen when they first played the audios. It _sounded_ like him, even though he knew it was not. After three minutes – with DeVoe's argument becoming louder and louder, more urgent, _don't do this_ – the conversation took a dire turn as DeVoe gargled in pain, rasping and screaming, collapsing within a few steps.

Forehead to his knees, Barry imagines the dialogue playing out hours before the staged scene in the comfort of the DeVoe's home. They would have made sure every vocalization and staggering step was perfect. Once they had been satisfied, they would have gone after Dominic. Then DeVoe, inhabiting Dominic's body, would have filled in the audible gaps.

With the interplay between DeVoe's voice and Dominic's impression of his own, the end result was doubly convincing. Had they been the same speaker, a keen-eared witness may have sensed foul play. With the sharp discrepancy, it was audibly clear that they were two different people. The tape was a lie, but the witnesses weren't wrong.

After listening to the audios – over and over and over again – Barry half-thought in a hunger-induced delirium that he _had_ killed DeVoe. He kept his sanity, only just, by focusing his awareness on Marlize DeVoe, seated nearby in the courtroom, not smiling but paying attention. Inwardly, she must have relished the reprisals and the way Barry sank slowly in his chair, an unconscious devastation shackling him to the floor. Outwardly, she was the bereaved widow struggling to keep a blank face for the audience eager to soak in drama, giving no hint that she had participated in it.

That must have chafed.

It's so quiet. It's so _dark_.

Desperate to fill the silence, Barry recites the tape to his knees.

" _You shouldn't be here_."

DeVoe says simply, " _I know. I'm looking for a ceasefire. A détente._ "

" _You have a restraining order against me._ "

" _I'd be willing to have it lifted for a moment of your time._ "

A beat. Barry lets it hang in the air. " _Come in_." The door clicks shut in his memory. He flinches from nothing. " _Take a seat_."

" _I'd prefer to stand_."

" _Take a seat_."

" _So hostile, Mr. Allen?_ "

" _Talk or get out._ "

" _The restraining order would not be necessary if I could persuade you to leave my wife and me alone._ "

" _I know who you are. You're a monster._ "

" _You're mistaken._ "

" _I am_ not—" Venom adds volume to Barry's voice. He lowers it. " _You fooled them. You can't fool me._ "

" _I beg you to reconsider. Let it go. Move on. We have passed every vetting that has been forced upon us._ "

" _You've evaded capture. You're a criminal. A liar._ " Seething, he says brusquely, " _And so is your wife_."

" _You will not speak ill of her—_ " DeVoe's voice rises sharply.

Barry's meets it: " _You're threatening mine!_ "

" _I have done NO SUCH THING_." A horrible thud reverberates in his memory as something sharp sinks into flesh, followed by a loud groan. " _Oh, God._ "

" _You're not gonna hurt her,_ " Barry says, shivering, whispering, " _you're never gonna hurt anyone again_."

" _Please—don't do this—"_

With an unintelligible rasp, DeVoe dies. In Barry's memory, sirens ring, closing in.

In the present, he reaches up and covers his ears, rocking back and forth. He didn't kill DeVoe. The scene never transpired. It was crafted, designed to implicate him. He wasn't home, he was with Joe and Iris and the rest of his family. They were having a lovely holiday dinner.

He was innocent. He's _innocent_.

Rising to his feet, cold and sore and sticky already, he reaches for the door, pressing his palms against it, searching for a point of weakness. He could – he could vibrate through it, unlock it, and then – then what? Explain to the startled guard that he accidentally phased through the door? Even if, somehow _if_ , there's no one stationed near the door, the video monitor will pick up the blur. Someone will check. Someone will find an empty cell.

And then he will be in a lot of trouble.

He retreats to the farthest part of the cage, back against the wall, trying to keep his breathing steady. Eight hours. Eight hours in silence. Eight hours in solitude. He can do this. He can.

Some might even say that it's a gift, a forced break from his hectic life. This whole affair has been a mandatory pause on his Flash-related business, never daring to escape, never having the strength to pull it off when he dares. He should be happy to finally have a chance on his own, a chance to reflect.

He's not happy.

There's a restlessness in his soul craving stimulation. He thinks about using his speed to try carving words into the wall, anything to transform the blank space around him into something worth looking at. Any way to pass the time that isn't staring in consternation at the unyielding cell door.

He remembers back in school being stuck in a desk for hours and hours and hours, fidgeting, twisting, aching to change focus. He had so many _ideas_ , so many other interests to attend to, but he couldn't do anything about them. He couldn't do anything but sit and simmer, attempting to stay focused but glancing at the clock, at the windows, at every object in the room, wrestling with his notebook.

He aches for a notebook now, something to tear into and crumple up, something to sit in his hands, to entertain him.

People who have never experienced solitary confinement underestimate the impact of near total sensory deprivation on the human psyche. Outsiders entertain a simplified version of the truth where all one has to do is stand in a corner and wait for a bell to chime. Stand and wait. It happens every day, everywhere – waiting in line, waiting in rooms, waiting for the next moment to arrive, all the while glancing at the clock, scrolling through a phone, flipping through the pages of a dog-eared book. Waiting. Waiting.

But in all that waiting the senses remain engaged and the freedom to move on persists. One can give up and walk away. One can talk to other people and find new ways to entertain oneself. One can explore a virtually infinite pool of alternatives to the experience at hand. No one compels the free person to do anything; they come and go wherever they please, to their delight and detriment. There are two types of waiting, and only one version is friendly. The friendly version is voluntary; the other, the twenty-four-square-foot cell, is of the involuntary persuasion.

Barry has no choice but to stand in the cell and wait, without anything to look at, anything new to handle, anything to engage his already restless mind. He dares to hope it's been at least half an hour and fears it's only been a few minutes. He lifts his hands and folds them behind his neck, but it makes him feel like his throat is closing up, so he drops his hands again and paces. There isn't much room to pace. Halting, he slams a fist into the wall in frustration.

Again.

And again.

And again.

He lets his hand bruise, snarling and resisting the mind-numbing silence, the jarring lack of novelty around him. He claws at the wall and only stops when he realizes just how animalistic he must appear, breathing hard. Retreating, he flinches when his back hits the wall, too close, every wall in this cell is too close.

He breathes harshly, reaching up to hold a hand to his throat, reminding himself that he _can_ breathe. He can breathe, even if it doesn't feel right, even if it doesn't want to stick in his chest, even if his world is spiraling out of control. Closing his eyes, he tries to focus on it, slowing his breath down, down, down…

Sluggishly, he opens his eyes and finds the hungry ache in his stomach gone. The restlessness, the unceasing energy on his skin, evaporates. He feels lighter, less constricted. Warmth blooms in his chest. For a glorious instant that lasts and lasts and lasts, he knows the comfort of the Speed Force.

It's impossible to say how long he stays there, time frozen around him. Phasing feels like an effortless pursuit, a tempting alternative to his fate. He wants to run, to run and never come back, to simply join the Speed Force and know its joy forever. It would be a good life. Some might even call it the perfect life, apart from all suffering, free of all pain.

But as exhaustion finally sinks into his bones, he realizes that running will only isolate him forever from those he loves, and he cannot leave them here.

Slowly, the world around him catches up. His breath catches in his chest. He realizes with painful fixation that he's hyperventilating, trying and failing to slow down. _You're fine_ , he tells himself, sitting on the floor, aching for six hours to have passed. _You're fine_.

But nothing around him changes, nothing except the way the world spins nauseatingly.

He drifts into the Speed Force to escape it and is shunted almost violently back to the land of the living. He swallows hard against the bile rising in his throat. He won't throw up. He will not throw up. He can't afford to – given how precious calories are in prison, it's almost suicidal to surrender any – but he still hunches over and gags painfully for several long minutes.

Minutes. What is a minute to the universe, anyway? Sixty seconds. Sixty arbitrary cuts of time, each one representing the heartbeat of a great beast without a face. The beast is known because of the human urge to exist discretely, definitively. But time is fluid, time is backwards and forwards and every direction besides. Time refuses to be compartmentalized.

It moves briskly and slowly, arduously and effortlessly. In the cell, it seems to cease altogether, leaving him in a vacuum of time. He blinks and finds his breath deepening in his chest and knows he cannot retreat to the Speed Force forever, that real time will not pass if he stays here, but he is tired and sick and sore, just four weeks into this nightmarish sentence and nine weeks into this entire awful affair.

For five weeks, he held onto the hope that he might be freed, that somehow they would find an answer. But when judgment day came and he was sent here, he knew it was the beginning of something long and unspeakably terrible, something to be obliterated from his experiences, to be forgotten as quickly as it was forged.

Trying to forget, he lies down on the floor, partially curled up because he is too long to fit into this coffin. He closes his eyes against the world around him and lets the Speed Force lull him to sleep.

* * *

 

Groggier and hungrier than he's ever been, Barry awakes with a groan.

He doesn't get up, doesn't care that his cheek is pressed against the gritty floor. He doesn't even open his eyes, willing himself to believe the lie that he's not here, that he's anywhere but here, that the door will open any second and he will be free. He clings to that notion – he will be free – even though he knows it's painfully optimistic.

Seconds trickle by, spiking sensations across numb skin. He should sit up, stand, stretch – his body, curled in one position for too long, resists inactivity – but he doesn't want to fully acknowledge reality. Not now. Not yet.

Leave him be. Just a little longer. Just a little bit longer.

He counts his own heartbeat to pass the time, one-two-three-four, and realizes that he has to Speed to do it. He forces himself to stop, to return to real time. The ache in his stomach is excruciating, a hunger like an animal tearing into him. He knows he would put a rock in his mouth and swallow it if there was one on the ground. God, he's so hungry. He knows that he's missing the 1200 hours meal, knows it and still thinks it's at least 2300 hours now, it's late, it must be, how can it not have been almost a day since the door closed?

With dull expectation, he waits for the door to open. He waits for them to drag him to his feet because it is easier than doing it himself. But no one comes, and after the longest half-hour – eight minutes, five minutes, three minutes – of his life, he pushes himself upright.

Groaning, he stretches, first his arms and then his legs. He rubs feeling back into his numb shoulders and massages each finger with the opposite hand, desperate to regain some sensation. He feels detached, cold and undersized in his skin, like he can't quite occupy all of it, like it's a layer around him that doesn't belong to him. He prods his own abdomen with unfeeling curiosity, rubbing a hand across his unshaven cheek and registering the brisk feeling of sharp little hairs gliding across his fingers.

Rising to his feet, he puts a hand on the wall that is four feet away to steady himself. The world seesaws warningly. His knees tremble. He's so hungry. He has to phase, he _has_ to phase, damn the consequences, damn it all, but he can't even focus enough to slow down his breath, numb and cold and some void space in between. He can't move, holding himself upright until it is too much and he sinks back down.

It's hard to tell what happens next. He thinks he passes out, awaking to similar but exaggerated grievances, a sorer shoulder, an achier stomach, knives digging into his appendages. He tries to stretch out and feels his feet hit the door. Furious and exhausted, he smashes them into it repeatedly, making a truly spectacular clamor, until a very loud clang comes from the opposite side, making him jump.

The guard doesn't say anything, but Barry doesn't need to hear words. Heart pounding, he waits for more, but nothing more happens. Desperate to chase the taste of an interaction, he kicks the door again. There's no response. Again, and again, and again, with a desperation that only weakens his efforts over time, he tries to solicit a second response. Nothing comes. Eventually, his feet halt altogether.

* * *

 

For a time, Barry drowses, neither asleep nor awake.

He slips in and out of Speed Force, chasing those moments of reprieve like gasps of water in a desert. He knows it won't sustain him to the next oasis but he still dares to live, dares to find life here.

He twists his prisoner's uniform in his hands, strips naked twice, just to see if it'll help, if it'll make the agony less sharp, but all it makes him is cold and vaguely embarrassed. He dresses again in stiff, sweat-soaked clothes, and huddles inward, waiting for the hours to pass.

He asks aloud, "Anybody there?" because he wants to solicit a response. No one answers, but the impulse unleashes a flood. He starts talking incessantly, then, just to hear something other than the buzzing stillness of the light. "Is it fun, being on the other side of the door? Do you like it? Do you hate it? Is it voyeuristic?" He digs into that, going for the sharpest verbal knives he can find, taunting, deriding, until finally a loud clang makes his heart skip a beat.

"I knew you were there," he says, and laughs, and it's a little hysterical. He loves and hates that simple awful acknowledgement, unaccompanied by a human voice, detached in its bluntness. "Bet you'd love to hit me with that," he taunts, because he'd honestly rather be beaten up and sent back to his cell than spend the next-indeterminate-ever here. "Make me hurt, make me feel all the grief I've caused you. You want that, don't you? I just gotta give you a reason."

He spends – what he hopes is forty-five minutes but fears is only four minutes raving at the guard. It doesn't make a difference. He hears the footsteps drift away and has to raise his voice. It goes thin and cracks at some point, desperate, exhausted. Finally he falls silent. Painfully silent. Hopelessly silent.

Kicking the door, again and again, he waits for the disruptive thwack of a nightstick that isn't coming.

* * *

 

It's been three hours, or maybe just one.

Barry bites his own hand, sinking his teeth gently into the meat of his palm, not because he wants to eat it, he won't stoop that low, but simply for the sensation, skin between his teeth, bite marks against his hand. He gnaws on it, moving on after a point, letting Speed heal it quickly and before repeating his actions.

He would never admit to that moment outside the cell, but it is then, crouched in a corner and worrying his hand like a dog with a bone, that he begins to wonder if he'll actually go insane in here.

* * *

 

By the three-hour-fourteen-minute mark, he's certain he's losing his mind.

He was born on three-fourteen, pi-day. Pie day. Even the thought makes the delirious ache of hunger thump a fist against the closed door of his mind, no longer taking submissions. Emotionally, he doesn't care that he's hungry. He doesn't even care that he's stuck here for – five more hours? Five more minutes?

Some optimistic corner of his mind dares to hope it's the latter, but the door does not move. He shuffles, uncomfortable and restless, aching for sleep that isn't coming, sleep that doesn't want to slip over him, and waits for the guards to set him free. He thumps a foot against the door, but it's weak and quiet, and only makes a short, sharp pain zip up it.

* * *

 

Barry holds onto the bars and shouts down the hall that can't see him, repeating one phrase, over and over and over: " _I'm innocent!_ "

* * *

 

Without a voice, with barely the strength to stand, Barry lies on the floor hoping to either black out or to hear the door open, but neither reprieve arrives. Sniffing, he refuses to cry and still finds dampness on his cheeks.

How much longer? How much longer?

* * *

 

In a dream, the door opens.

The guards find him lying on the floor, half-catatonic, and haul him to his feet. They escort him to the food line, and Barry finds a tray in his hands, but there's no food to be found. There's no one in the dining hall, either. The guards disappear, and the doors vanish, too, until he finds himself standing in a black box, closing in on him, pressing against him, crushing him—

There's a loud clang on the other side of the door before light floods the cell. Barry blinks dazedly.

"Time's up," the guard says.

He stares at the man, not moving, not trusting it. It's an illusion. Even the foot against his side, nudging him, rather forcefully, to his feet doesn't feel entirely real. If he Flashed, he could have the guard down in a second, dead in an instant, and he shudders in revulsion at the thought. He wouldn't kill. He _didn't_ kill. He didn't kill anybody—

Closing his eyes, he grunts when the boot sinks into his side forcefully. "Up," the guard barks.

He ignores it. If he just stays here, waits it out, then eventually it will be over.

Something sharp sinks into him, electrifying pain. He convulses, jerking away from the Taser gun, tethered to its strings. The guard says forcefully, "Get up."

This time, he obliges, aware of the sticking points along his chest, threatening to deliver another shock. A second guard assists the first in frog-marching him down the hallway.

Barry's feet drag. He doesn't want to stand. It's exhausting, disconcerting to be surrounded by light and noise and changing scenery.

How, how can it change?

They deposit him in his main cell, alone, and the first guard snaps back his Taser strings. Locking the door, they walk away.

Barry sits on his cot in the corner, gasping for breath, struggling to convince his senses that any of it is real, anguishing over the sheer _amount_ of realism around him, how is the world this big, this _loud_?

In the silence of his ninety-square-foot cell, he quietly falls apart.

* * *

 

Dinner brings with it no joy, no sense of recovery, only the flinching, halting reincorporation into the world.

Barry doesn't know if he could feel more displaced if he had been held underwater for eight hours, trying to reset all of his senses. Dan, his cellmate, eats next to him. Barry picks listlessly at his food and shudders in learned distaste when, for the third time since arriving, he is selected for a random strip search.

At first, he thinks, it's almost better, like the guard banging the nightstick against the cell door. Human interaction, one-on-one. Soon, the search leaves his skin crawling. He shies away from the latex gloves before forcing himself to stand still, aware of those booted feet dangerously close to his own. He knows his toes would heal in a few hours, but he still doesn't want them broken. He could complain to the warden about mistreatment, but what evidence would he show her when his feet healed before they arranged a meeting?

Every touch is intrusive – the hands sifting through his hair, lifting his eyelids, manipulating his jaw, prodding his armpits, feeling down his arms, his legs, in between – but he closes his eyes and stays still, lets it happen. It's just part of the process. He cannot even find blame for the man, only a vague sense of relief that he doesn't stomp on Barry's toes.

Back at the cell, demoralized and defeated, he doesn't get up to shower like he always does after a search. He doesn't strictly need to – the guards don't make a mess, just invade his privacy in the profoundest ways possible – but he knows the urgency to get the sensation off his skin won't go away until he cleans up. And after his time in The Hole, he's musty and sticky, grimy and cold.

He has to shower. He has to start acting normal, start acting like it never happened, start acting like –

Dan, unflappable and almost twenty years older than Barry, scruffs him by the back of his shirt and hauls him to his feet. He shoves a towel in Barry's hands. When the guard arrives to escort them to the showers, he gives Barry a firm nudge between the shoulders to get him going.

In front of the guards, Barry is listless, cooperative only to the degree that he is forced to be, but with Dan he finds that he wants to be _better_ , wants to be enough. Dan is like him – a convicted murderer. Unlike Barry, Dan does not deny his charges. Although Barry can't articulate why, he knows Dan deserves better than his catatonia. Barry draws himself up and with shaking hands scrubs himself clean in the showers. Nearby, Dan showers shamelessly, unperturbed in his own nudity.

Dan has been in prison for almost six years now.

Barry can tell from his robustness, his cool confidence, detached confidence, Dan-who-killed-a-man confidence, that prison has changed Dan. It made him a prisoner, someone who could survive in these dark corridors and timeless spaces, enduring meals on a clock and guards at all times, his life dictated by the whims of human cruelty and kindness.

Barry finds something like heartache in his chest for the man and knows Dan would spit in his face if he voiced it because the one thing Dan does not need from him is pity. So he keeps his thoughts to himself and scrubs hard, scrubs himself raw, before putting on a fresh prison uniform.

Back in the cell, Dan says, "You smell better."

Barry makes an agreeing noise. An apology is the only verbal response that comes to mind, but he knows it isn't wanted. Sitting on his cot with his back against the wall, Dan regards him with an unreadable expression. Most of Dan's expressions, Barry has noticed, are disarmingly difficult to read, something like mechanical indifference dictating the color and force of his emotions.

An irrational urge to sit beside the man, hug the man, simply be close to the man and to know that he himself is alive and warm and human again nearly overpowers Barry. He resists the urge to act, sitting against the opposite wall from Dan and regarding him in silence. "It's fucked up," Dan says.

Barry nods once. He can't take his eyes off of Dan's face. He knows it must be eerie, distracting – nonhuman, even, to stare so long – but it's still disarming to him, the sensation of actually being with another person.

Dan stands. Barry averts his gaze apologetically, knowing he's acting weird, even for him, and holds his breath when Dan approaches him. He holds out a hand.

Barry loves him for not putting it on his shoulder and giving it a cajoling shake, for not forcing it on him. Dan simply extends the offer and waits for a moment that must last for an hour before Barry reaches forward. The second their fingers connect, Dan clasps his hand tightly. Barry feels tears burn in his eyes, looking away again even as he clings to Dan's hand.

It lasts for just four seconds, maybe less, but after they let go, Barry takes the first truly deep breath in hours.

* * *

 

At 0700 hours, Dan brings him orange peels.

Barry sucks on them hungrily, not even asking how he got them, not even daring to acknowledge this burgeoning thing like friendship between them because Dan doesn't even know his name, or care to know his name, and none of this can last because Barry can't stay here, and yet—

And yet, as he devours the last of the orange peel, oranges-are-his-favorite-prison-food, he finds that even the slightest spark of humanity shines in this dark underworld, and Dan, for him, is an irrepressible light.

* * *

 

One day, in the someday-soon that is not soon enough, Barry will be free.

He'll be home in his own bed, showering in his own shower – Joe's shower, he amends, because he can't fathom returning to his apartment because it's where he found the body, and—

Someday-soon, he thinks, breathing deeply as he stands in the Yard, he'll be free.

* * *

 

Fourteen days later, Barry's sentence is overturned.

* * *

 

Lying across from him in her childhood bed, Iris reaches out and strokes Barry's cheek. He closes his eyes, freshly-showered and thoroughly exhausted, still somehow anxious to return, to slip back into routine, to see Dan again—

But he doesn't need those things. Those things are part of the past. He's free.

He's free.

Draping an arm around her waist, he doesn't pull her close, doesn't entirely remember _how_ to hold her, not after six weeks in hell, but he lets his thumb brush her side. She's soft and sweet and patient, even though he's sharp-edged and stressed and neurotic. He appreciates it more than words can say that she does not push him to talk about it.

The silence between them is punctuated by their breathing, not quite in rhythm. He likes that. It makes it easy to pick out the steady susurration of her breath. It makes it easier not to feel ashamed that he's not – he's not _her Barry_ , the same person they cuffed that night, almost three months ago.

He's trying to be.

She leans up and kisses his forehead, like she can hear his thoughts. He shuffles closer, still holding her. She puts her arm just above his shoulders, cradling his head.

Safe, secure, and somehow still sane, he dares to drift off and find reprieve in sleep.


End file.
